DJ Culture

The song is about sampling images, quotations, ideas from history to suit a modern purpose, much the same way how a DJ mixes and samples. The images may be recycled into a different context, but it is surprising how much similarity remains.

My attempt to interpret a song about interpretation follows (hopefully not too lame)

"Imagine a war which everyone won. Permanent holiday in endless sun" ... modern warfare now seeks to be quick and clean, and comes across as surgical and anti-septic.

"Peace without wisdom, one steals to achieve." ... messages are sampled without being understood.

"Relentlessly, pretending to believe attitudes are materialistic, positive or frankly realistic" ... because positivism, realism and materialism doctrines endure, history is misinterpreted or superficially understood.

"Which is terribly old-fashioned, isn't it? Or isn't it?" ... we think we are wiser than before, but we are in fact just repeating history.

"(DJ Culture) Dance with me. (DJ Culture) Let's pretend"....after this introspective first voice, in the chorus we go back to embracing sampling as a crude form of political debate

"Living in a satellite fantasy. Waiting for the night to end" ... but who am I fooling?

"Let's pretend we won a war. Like a football match, ten-nil the score. Anything's possible, we're on the same side"... I can reinterpret an event to be a victory in my favour if I so wish, and deny that we were ever opposing each other.

"Or otherwise on trial for our lives"...but the fact is still is still subject to question.

"I've been around the world for a number of reasons. I've seen it all, the change of seasons" ... if you know the world well enough you can match a mood (season) to a circumstance. And I need not explain my reasoning.

"And I, my Lord, may I say nothing?" .... I don't consider this to be immoral, so I will not hold myself to account.

[chorus] "Living in a satellite fantasy. Wondering who's your friend (DJ Culture)"... sometimes in reinterpreting history I loose track of who my real friends are"

"Now as a matter of pride. Indulge yourself, your every mood. No feast-days, or fast-days, or days of abstinence intrude"....key change, and the narrator invites us to shamelessly consider recycling or resampling history

"Consider for a minute who you are. What you'd like to change, never mind the scars" ... the narrator notes this power allows us to also change our own images of ourselves (symbolised in the video clip with sex changes and weight loss)

"Bury the past, empty the shelf (bury the past). Decide it's time to reinvent yourself" ...Come on! Just do it!

"Like Liz before Betty, she after Sean. Suddenly you're missing, then you're reborn"...and it is not just the image that changes, but your own essence is transmogrified in the process.

"And I, my Lord, may I say nothing?" .... (Again) I don't consider this to be immoral, so I will not hold myself to account.

I remember recalling that the PSB's considered this song their response to the lunatic cheerleading over the first Gulf War. The constant visual dazzling showing the pinpoint bomb hits and bunker busting explosions from so high up it didn't even "feel" like death. It was all like a cool video game.

So in that context, all the talk of "imagine a war where everyone won," and "living in a satellite fantasy, waiting for the night to end," fit quite well.

I seem to recall the last line was specifically in reference to Wolf Blitzer's report from the hotel room when Baghdad was struck. It made him an instant media hero, and represented the new era of modern gizmo war. Laser guided missiles, drone weaponry, and the like.

I don't believe the song is political at all and I was baffled when the Discography liner notes said the song was inspired by the Gulf War. To me, the song is all about the "rose colored glasses" aspects of gay culture that we're not allowed to talk about.